How To Create a Twitter Marketing Strategy in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide

What is Twitter marketing?

In a nutshell, Twitter marketing is a form of social media marketing that boils down to promoting and advertising a brand on Twitter. Twitter marketing can be very effective for brands of all types and sizes — particularly when it comes to increasing brand awareness, forging relationships with customers, and driving website traffic. Plus it remains effective in 2023, even after a tumultuous chapter in Twitter’s history that put the platform’s reputation among brands at risk.

Why your brand needs to market on Twitter

Still thinking whether Twitter marketing is the right choice for your brand? Here are some facts and figures to consider. 

First of all, Twitter is still one of the biggest social media platforms out there. As of January 2023, it had 556M users worldwide, according to Statista. Moreover, the number of Twitter users has been growing steadily since 2020 across all age groups surveyed in the U.S. (via The Infinite Dial report). So, if you have a target audience in the US and you need more brand exposure, marketing on Twitter is an opportunity not to be overlooked. 

That said, Twitter is still different from its more “glamorous” counterparts like Instagram and TikTok (more on that later). So, you can’t simply copy and paste your strategy created for other channels and use it for Twitter. Instead, you need to create a unique marketing strategy tailored to this platform. 

But how do you do it? Let’s zero in on the topic.

How to create a Twitter marketing strategy

Every business is unique, so there is no one-size-fits-all Twitter marketing strategy. However, the basic steps are more or less the same for everyone, whether you’re a small business owner or work for a large company looking to strengthen its social media presence. 

So, here are the main steps to making your Twitter marketing strategy a success.    

Step 1: Audit your account

If your business doesn’t have a Twitter profile yet, you need to set it up to begin with. To do that, follow instructions from Twitter’s official Help Center. 

Already have an account? Then audit it to understand its strengths and weaknesses and identify what you need to improve. 

Here’s what to look into firsthand: 

• Account type. Similar to other platforms, there are Personal and Professional accounts on Twitter. To use Twitter for marketing, you need a Professional account that opens access to specialized tools for businesses. Only have a Personal account yet? You can learn more about Professional accounts on Twitter and how to set one up on Twitter Business.  
• Profile info. Once you have a Professional account, proceed with your profile info. Does your profile represent your brand the right way? Are all the necessary details in place? Does your profile look trustworthy? If you feel something is off, customize your profile to make it fit for marketing purposes. Later in this article, we’ll explain how to do it step by step. 
• Number of followers. Do you have an audience to work with, or will growing your follower count be your top priority in the near future? 
• Insights from Twitter Analytics. Twitter provides meaningful insights for free via its native tool called Twitter Analytics — so, make sure you have this option turned on. You can access it on you computer by hitting the “More” button on the left panel of your dashboard and proceeding to the Creator studio, or through analytics.twitter.com after logging in to your account. 

When you open your Twitter Analytics page, look into impressions (how many accounts have seen your tweets), engagement rates (how many accounts interacted with your tweets), follower count growth, top-performing tweets, and other metrics.  

Here’s how the “Tweets” tab looks in Twitter analytics: a lot of information to sink your teeth into!

• Next, look into what people are saying about the topics relevant to your brand. To that end, follow your hashtags and identify the top-performing ones. To take it one step further, also check brand mentions to get an idea of the overall sentiment toward your brand among Twitter users.   

After you wrap up the audit, put together a comprehensive list of what works and what doesn’t. You’ll need it when you get to devising your content strategy. 

Step 2. Define your goals

Now, proceed with defining your goals. Approach it like a social media marketing strategy for any other channel: think of what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts on this platform, how much time it’s going to take, and how it will benefit your business.  

After defining strategic goals (for example, “raise brand awareness among US audiences” or “increase traffic to the website”), break them down into smaller ones to make it easier to track progress.   

When doing so, use the SMART formula to ensure you’re not spending time and effort on something that can’t be achieved or measured in the first place. 

Here’s what this formula looks like:  

Here are some examples of SMART goals for Twitter marketing to give you an idea of what to aim for: 

• Find your brand’s target audience on Twitter and grow your follower count X times in Y months. 
• Improve CTR X times in Y months to drive more traffic to your company’s website. 
• Revive your existing Twitter account by tweeting according to a calendar plan and regularly engaging with your audience to improve engagement rates X times in Y months. 
• Increase brand awareness by customizing your Twitter profile, establishing a consistent brand voice, and engaging with your audience in a meaningful way. Plus track the results by monitoring mentions and comparing them with the baseline after X months.

Step 3. Analyze competitors

If you’ve done your competitive environment analysis earlier, you already know your main competitors in the industry. Now, you just need to find out who is present on Twitter and analyze their Twitter marketing strategy. 

Haven’t analyzed your competitors yet? Then, it’s a good idea to do it now because knowing your rivals is essential to the success of any marketing strategy. Read our article to learn more about the competitive environment and how to analyze it.  

When you find your competitors on Twitter, check their profiles to find out the following: 

• What they highlight in their profile description. 
• How often they tweet and what exactly.
• How their brand voice sounds. 
• What works for their audience and what doesn’t — i.e., which tweets get the highest count of likes and retweets.  

You can also check what your rivals’ customers say about them on Twitter by following those brands’ unique hashtags and checking mentions in the same manner you did for your own profile. 

For example, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ each have a distinct Twitter presence. Krispy Kreme usually posts tweets with videos or pictures to entice the audience. The brand uses a lot of emojis and a generally positive and neutral voice. 

One of Krispy Kreme’s typical tweets:

Dunkin’, on the other hand, mostly posts plain text tweets. Its tone of voice is ironic and youthful (no capitalization, slang, etc.). Here’s an example:

Step 4. Devise a content strategy

Now, create a content strategy for your Twitter account. If you’ve done content strategies for other social media, you already know what to do because the process is pretty similar across platforms. Anyway, let’s revise the main steps — just in case. 

Basically, devising a content strategy for Twitter (or any content strategy, for that matter) boils down to answering the following questions: 

1. What to share? Think of the topics relevant to your business and the types of content most popular on the platform (Twitter, in our case). 
2. With whom? Segment your target audience and create buyer personas. Also, identify the topics most relevant for each segment or persona. 
3. How often? Use information from the previous section of this guide to determine the best times and frequency to post. 
4. How to measure results? Define the vital metrics (for example, impressions, engagement rate, and number of followers) and track them regularly in Twitter Analytics. You’ll need this data to course-correct your strategy every once in a while — once a month, for example. 

That’s it as the basics go — but of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. So, here are some pro tips to improve your content strategy for Twitter:  

• Determine the types of content your followers like best and make the most of them by featuring them more often. Content ideas to test include text-only tweets, videos, images, and GIFs.
• That said, make sure your content is diverse enough to engage all segments of your Twitter audience. 
• Use a monthly content calendar to highlight important dates like holidays or events special for your brand and prepare your posts in advance. To that end, you can use the Marketing calendar by Twitter for Business to monitor important events most relevant to the platform’s users. You can also check out Selzy’s calendar of important e-commerce events. 
• Recycle top-performing posts from your other social media channels (but make sure you tweak them to fit the Twitter format). 
• Make the most of your website content and increase traffic by providing links to your blog posts and/or product pages in your tweets.     
• Use elements of content strategies for your other social media accounts as well as content ideas from your competitors. However, make sure you only do so for inspiration so that your Twitter content stays unique.

And above all, make sure your content strategy is aligned with the goals you defined earlier on. Is increasing CTR your primary goal? Then you need to post more tweets with links to your website. Are you aiming at improving engagement? Then focus on shareable or likable content like short videos and remember to include calls for comments in your tweets.  

Step 5. Develop a brand voice

So, you’ve got a content strategy. But without a brand voice, it’s like a person without a personality: featureless and totally forgettable. Obviously, you can’t allow your brand to be like that if you want to cut through the noise (and there is A LOT of noise on Twitter). So, make sure you have a recognizable brand voice and use it consistently throughout your tweets (and your profile, for that matter).

If your business is not a fresh startup, chances are you already have a brand voice that you use across other platforms and for offline communications. In that case, you only need to tweak it a little to fit the platform’s specifics (its infamously limited number of characters, first and foremost). You can also just use your normal brand voice without changes and see how it goes. 

For example, the leading coffee brand Starbucks uses a casual and playful brand voice on Twitter to match its overall friendly and accessible image. 

Don’t have a brand voice yet? That’s definitely an issue you need to fix together with your marketing team. Don’t have a team yet? Then, just be authentic and make the most of your own unique way of communication.  

Step 6. Determine the best time to tweet

Last but not least, you also need to make sure your tweets actually get seen by your audience. 

To approach tweeting time strategically, you can use general statistics-based recommendations. For example, this chart from Sprout Social indicates that, generally, the best time to tweet is between 9 to 12 AM on Tuesdays to Thursdays. 

However, non-personalized recommendations will only take you so far. So analyze your followers’ activity (impressions and engagement, mainly) to determine your best tweeting time more precisely. When you have the data, put together your own chart similar to the one shown above.  

But how do you tweet exactly when you need to — especially considering that Twitter is a busy platform that calls for a lot of content? Luckily, you don’t have to sit there all day waiting for “perfect timing”. Instead, you can simply schedule your tweets, either using Twitter’s native scheduling option or with the help of specialized tools such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and others.  

Here’s what scheduling looks like on Twitter: just click on the calendar icon when creating a new tweet. You can also schedule multiple tweets and access them by clicking on the “Scheduled tweets” link in the same window. 

How to use Twitter for marketing: 5 essential tips

Now that you know the basic steps to create a Twitter marketing strategy, it’s time to get into more detail. In this section, we’ll share some Twitter marketing tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your efforts on this platform.  

Customize your profile

Before trying to attract new followers, prepare your Twitter profile first. If you want people to stay with you and not leave the page after taking a brief glance, start with the following. 

Twitter handle and display name. A Twitter handle aka account name is a part of your profile URL. It comes after the “@” symbol and appears in your profile plus whenever you are mentioned on Twitter. Ideally, your Twitter handle should be the same as your brand name to make it easy for customers to find you across platforms. You can also choose a derivative of your brand name, or something familiar to your customers. 

Your display name, in contrast, doesn’t have to be unique and can be changed at any time. For a business account, the display name is typically the name of the company.  

For example, Selzy’s Twitter handle is @selzy_marketing, the account URL is  twitter.com/selzy_marketing, and the display name is simply Selzy.   

Profile picture. Your profile picture appears in your profile above the display name and the handle, as well as beside all your posts and comments. Your job is to make this picture instantly recognizable, so make sure it is in hi-res, doesn’t contain unnecessary elements, and represents your brand. If you have a logo, picking it as your profile picture is the best choice, as shown in the image above. 

Don’t have a logo? Just pick your best headshot photo.   

Header. A big banner covering the upper part of your profile page is called a header, just like in any other social network. Typically, it features design elements and colors from your brand book. This makes your profile instantly recognizable. But you can also use this space to convey extra info and promote whatever is relevant to your brand at the moment. In that case, you should still stick to your brand book in terms of design, of course.  

Here’s how Bloomberg uses its header image to announce its current feature and prompt readers to take action (click on the link): 

Bio. Twitter bio is the first thing new visitors to your profile will read. And you only have 160 characters to create that first impression, so use them wisely. Ideally, you should come up with a short (and possibly witty) one-sentence description that encompasses the spirit of your brand. 

Here’s how IMDb handles the task: 

Location. Specifying location is optional, so you can decide whether or not to add it to your profile based on your type of business and the type of audience you plan to target. Online businesses often leave location out while offline companies typically specify the location to make it easier for customers to find them.  

Birthday (founding date). This field is also optional. But if you do want to showcase your (or your company’s) birthday — for example, to underscore how established your company is — fill it in.  

There is also one extra step you can take to make your profile even more attractive to potential followers: adding a pinned tweet. 

A pinned tweet is literally a tweet that is “pinned” to the top of your page — it is always displayed on top of your feed, above all of your other tweets. Because it doesn’t go down the feed as other tweets do, it is ideal for providing key information about you or your business or promoting current events, products, etc. 

Here’s a pinned tweet currently featured on Selzy’s profile, for example:  

Engage with your audience

Unlike some other popular social media channels, Twitter is centered around conversations. So, the engagement part in Twitter marketing works differently from what it does, for example, in TikTok marketing or Instagram marketing. But of course, there are also some similarities. 

Here’s what you can do to better engage with your audience on Twitter: 

Ask questions in your tweets and add unique hashtags to make it easier for readers to follow the conversation. 

Monitor profile mentions, answer the questions and retweet interesting tweets mentioning your profile.  

Create a Twitter poll to learn what your followers think about your brand or some topic relevant to you (and remember to add a relevant hashtag to increase visibility!). 

Create a Twitter thread to share text posts containing more than 280 characters. You can also use threads to encourage followers to join in the conversation by being the first to comment. (Alternatively, you can buy a Twitter Blue subscription to write longer posts — more on that later). 

Host a Twitter сhat. Twitter сhats are pre-planned live events typically lasting about an hour. To host a chat, you need to come up with a relevant topic, set the time and date, pick a unique hashtag, and inform your audience about the event in advance. During the chat itself, participants will engage in the conversation by posting tweets with your unique hashtag. 

Use Twitter features for business. From Trends to Spaces, Twitter offers an array of tools to help businesses interact with their audiences. In the next section, we’ll review them in more detail. 

Use hashtags and follow relevant trends

As mentioned earlier, hashtags can help Twitter users discover your content. To increase your chances of getting noticed, use them together with Twitter Trends. You can find the latter through the Explore page — sometimes, along with the unique hashtag for the topic. Don’t see a hashtag? Just click on the trend and see what hashtags are featured in the tweets. 

But be careful to only pick trends that are relevant to you and make sure you’re “in” on the topic. Otherwise, you may waste your time or even make embarrassing mistakes that may damage your reputation. 

Here’s what the Trending tab looks like. You can also browse by topics if you click on the other tabs. 

Utilize branded visuals

Twitter might be a largely conversation-based platform, but tweets with visuals still typically outperform those without them. According to data cited on Twitter Business, 77.5% of users in 2022 would view a digital video. Moreover, there’s been an 84% year-over-year watch time increase on Twitter lately. Images and GIFs also improve engagement, plus they provide an excellent opportunity to share more information in one tweet.    

Brands can add to that effect by using branded visuals — that is, images, videos, and GIFs featuring their logo. Are you posting a tutorial video on how to use your product? Attaching an exclusive funny meme relevant to your brand? Including a logo will help you get noticed and increase brand recognition — especially if your content gets many retweets.

Here’s the perfect example of a branded visual from Lego Group:

Run Twitter ads

Trying hard to find your audience on Twitter but still getting poor results? One way to deal with this situation is to run paid ads. Doing so will help you increase your profile’s visibility and ensure you reach the people potentially most interested in your brand.   

Currently, Twitter offers two types of paid ads you can choose from: promoted tweets and paid ads. Let’s look at them both more closely.   

Promoted Ads

Technically, promoted Ads aka Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets, either plain text or with images/videos, that users can interact with the normal way — like, share, and comment. However, promoted tweets are labeled as “Promoted” so that everyone on the platform could know this is a paid ad. 

There is also a variety of placements available for promoted tweets, from targeted user profiles to Trend Takeovers. To learn more about Promoted Tweets and available placements, read the official information from the Ads Help Center on Twitter Business.  

Twitter Ads

If you plan to run a more comprehensive ad campaign on Twitter, Promoted Ads might not be enough. In that case, you can use Twitter Ads that come in a variety of ad formats (including Promoted Ads) and with different goals such as driving traffic to your website or generating leads. 

There are also more placements available for Twitter Ads — for example, you can promote Trends and events, as well as your account (as opposed to individual tweets in Promoted Ads). Other differences include pricing and targeting options. To learn more about running Twitter Ads campaigns, read Twitter Ads 101.  

5 Twitter features for business marketing

To help businesses make their marketing on the platform more effective, Twitter currently offers a variety of native tools and features. Some of them we’ve already mentioned in the previous sections — namely, Twitter Analytics and Twitter Trends. Here, you’ll find more Twitter features you might find handy. 

Twitter Lists

As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of “noise” on Twitter — so, cutting through it and finding relevant information might be challenging. And that’s exactly where Twitter Lists — one of the platform’s oldest features — can help. 

Whether you choose to create your own Twitter Lists or follow those created by others, this feature allows you to zero in on the topics most relevant to your business. And because tweets from Lists appear chronologically, you can rest assured you won’t miss anything important — like some industry news, for example.

Here’s how Forbes uses Lists to sort tweets and accounts by topics and account types:

You can arrange your Lists in a similar manner — for example, by grouping industry influencers, media outlets, and your team members in separate Lists (you can create up to a thousand). This way you can highlight and cross-link your other accounts, team members, or experts. However, remember that your Twitter Lists are publicly available, so don’t include accounts you don’t want other people to see. 

Twitter Circles

Introduced in 2022, Twitter Circles allow users to share selected tweets with a small group (up to 150 accounts), or Circle, instead of posting them publicly. Basically, it works similarly to the “Close friends” option on Instagram or “Friends only” posts on Facebook. However, Circles is not a completely private space because answers and retweets are still publicly available unless the accounts are protected. 

For businesses, Circles can be a convenient way to share exclusive information with a select group of people (not necessarily followers because you can add anyone to your Circle) — for example, with media or influencers. This can help you set trends and position your brand as a thought leader in the industry. 

Twitter Communities

In contrast with Twitter Circles, Communities are totally private, so nobody from outside the community can see neither tweets nor replies posted to the Community. But you need to meet eligibility criteria to be able to start one.  

For businesses, creating a Twitter Community is an ideal opportunity to engage with the most loyal customers, get regular feedback, handle requests, and share exclusive “member-only” content. 

Here are some ideas for using Twitter Communities for marketing your business: 

• Engage in detailed discussions about your brand and products to better understand your customers’ needs. 
• Answer your customers’ questions about your brand and products. 
• Run surveys among community members to gather insights about your brand and products.
• Provide exclusive early access to new products and gather feedback.
• Offer exclusive “member-only” content to incentivize users to join your Twitter Community.

Twitter Spaces

In case you’re missing the dynamics of an actual real-time voice chat, Twitter Spaces is exactly the tool you need. It enables users to host live audio conversations and engage in discussions, which opens lots of new possibilities for brands. Ideas include launching a product, holding a Q&A session, and discussing industry events with journalists and influencers. 

More reasons to try Spaces? According to The Infinite Dial 2022 report, Twitter Spaces was the most recognizable and most-used audio-based social media service in the US. Moreover, live audio chats were the #1 social media content format marketers planned to leverage in 2023, the HubSpot report indicates.    

Twitter Blue

Previously, the blue checkmark beside the users’ display names that confirmed the profile had been verified was free. In 2023, this checkmark is a paid option called Twitter Blue, and there’s been a lot of controversy over this change. 

Anyway, it looks like the Twitter Blue verification process has become more rigorous lately, so the blue (or gold) checkmark is generally a reliable indicator that the profile is authentic. Moreover, the Twitter Blue subscription currently comes with other benefits, such as a tweet editing option and hi-res video uploads. So, subscribing to Twitter Blue makes perfect sense if you can spare $8-11 a month. At least, most big brands prefer to retain their checkmarks, as you can clearly see on Twitter.

Key takeaways

Today, Twitter remains one of the most popular social networks out there, especially in the US. So, it still makes sense for brands to use Twitter for marketing, especially when it comes to boosting brand awareness, nurturing relationships with customers, and increasing website traffic. 

In this detailed guide, we’ve explained everything you need to know to build an effective Twitter marketing strategy. Now, let’s revise the key points: 

• Twitter marketing boils down to promoting and advertising a business and its products on Twitter. It is a multi-step process that is similar to marketing on any other social media platform. 
• Building a Twitter marketing strategy involves the following main steps: auditing the profile, defining the goals, analyzing competitors, devising a content strategy, developing a brand voice, and determining the best time to tweet.  
• To make the most of your strategy, you can use the following tips: customize your profile, engage with your audience regularly, use hashtags, and follow trends. You can also run paid ads to increase your brand’s visibility on the platform. 
• There are also several tools for businesses offered by the platform that you might find useful — namely, Trends, Lists, Circles, Communities, and Spaces. But of course, you don’t need to use all these tools at once. Just try them out and see what works best. 

Overwhelming as it may seem, Twitter marketing is not that complicated. With due diligence and a little practice, you’ll soon figure out how to make the most of your efforts on this platform. Good luck!